


1954

by awkwardpersonTM



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Aromantic Asexual Christine Canigula, F/F, F/M, Idk its hard to explain, M/M, sort of a time travel thing??, sort of not??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-08 10:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21474190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardpersonTM/pseuds/awkwardpersonTM
Summary: It's 1954 and Jeremy Heere's life is perfect.Until he meets Michael Mell.
Relationships: Brooke Lohst/Chloe Valentine, Jake Dillinger/Rich Goranski, Jeremy Heere/Michael Mell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to TheWritingDork (Ari), who helped edit this!! This is just the prologue, so it's really short, chapter will be longer though!

“You don’t want to do this, Jeremy,” the SQUIP growled in the midst of utter chaos. From the corner of his eye, Jeremy could see the mass of students force a SQUIP down Michael’s throat. To his left, Christine was starting to walk towards him, her face eerily blank. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. 

“Why not?” Jeremy yelled back.

The SQUIP paused, and Jeremy thought, for a fleeting second, that they just might have a chance. Then a sickening grin spread across its face. 

“Because I won’t let that happen.” The Squip said simply. 

“Wha—” Then the SQUIP snapped it’s fingers and everything went dark.

“So, Jeremy, how has your day been?” Squip asked from behind his desk. 

“It’s been great! Me and Christine walked to school together this morning, and she even let me hold her hand! Then, in math, we got our tests back and I got an A… again! Brooke was a little upset at first, but I told her that no one really gets A’s except for me and that I’ll help her study for the next one, and she seemed really happy about that. And later, the whole gang is going to the diner for malts to celebrate my grade.” Jeremy spun himself in the chair as he spoke to his guidance counselor. He had been coming to Squip for daily sessions since, well, forever. Jeremy couldn’t remember a day going by where he hadn’t talked to him at least once. 

“I’m happy to hear that, Jeremy, but mind your posture,” Squip scolded. Jeremy stopped the chair and straightened his back, giving Squip an apologetic smile. “So I take it that you and Christine are going steady now?” 

“I was going to officially ask her tonight, but pretty much, yeah! Unless she says no…” Jeremy felt his breathing start to pick up, anxiety pooling in his chest. 

Squip leaned forward across the desk, suddenly very serious, to look into Jeremy’s eyes. “I can assure you Christine will say yes. Has anyone ever said no to you?” Jeremy shook his head. “You are Jeremy Heere, and your life is perfect,” Squip leaned back again, relaxing back to his usual cool attitude. “I’ve made sure of that,” he added, quietly. 

“What was that?” Jeremy asked. 

“Nothing, but hurry up. I’m sure your friends are waiting for you to get back to them.” Squip looked at him expectantly. 

“Oh! Actually, yes they are!” Jeremy stood up, straightening the collar of his shirt (Squip wouldn’t want him looking like a slob in front of the whole school!). “See ya’ Squip! Thanks for the talk!” 

“Anytime, Jeremy! Shut the door on your way out.” Squip gave him a warm smile. Jeremy gave him one back then left, making sure to close the door. 

Once outside the office, he saw his friends waiting by the water fountain for him. Man, they were the best. They always waited for Jeremy when he went to visit Squip, no matter how long they chatted for. He was really lucky to have them. 

“Hey, Jeremy!” They all greeted with a smile. 

Christine bounced over to him, her poodle skirt flouncing accordingly, and linked their arms. “I missed you.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. 

Jeremy willed his face to not turn tomato red. “Me too.” He gave her a wide grin before turning back to the rest of his friends. “Now let’s get going!” The rest of the group whooped and cheered as they left the school to pile into Jake’s car, Jeremy rode shotgun, with Chloe, Brooke, Jenna, and Christine piled into the back. Jake pulled out of the spot and Jeremy marveled at the perfect sunny day, the cloudless blue sky, and just how great his life really was. 

It was 1954, and Jeremy Heere didn’t have a care in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

The night felt electric and alive as Jeremy sat in the booth, squished between Christine and the window, sipping on a milkshake. His friends were having a conversation on the latest gossip, but Jeremy was content to tune them out in favor of watching the rain fall outside. It pelted the ground, creating puddles that reflected back the neon blues and reds from the diner, and between the soft storm and the smudged streetlamps, Jeremy decided he liked the lightning he felt in his chest from watching the electric night. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt like that. 

The last time it rained Jeremy had… well… Where had he been the last time it rained? He could faintly remember, almost like remembering a dream, a car and a radio, singing along with… someone, as the rain crashed on the windshield like bullets, so loud the dial on the volume kept going up steadily. That night had also felt electric. 

“Are you okay?” Christine pulled him from his thoughts and back into Dewey’s, it was all suddenly too small,  _ too much _ . 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said quickly, feeling like he was going to crawl out of his skin if he had to sit inside one more second. “I’m just gonna take a quick walk outside.” He flashed what he hoped was an easy smile, and she moved out of the booth for him. With a, “Be back in a minute!”, Jeremy was out of the booth and trying not to run out of Dewey’s. He didn’t even spare a glance back at his friends’ perfectly confused faces.

He was immediately met with the damp storm outside. He crossed his arms over himself and huffed out a breath, tornadoes and hurricanes in his stomach finally settling. He leaned against the wall. 

Jeremy had never felt this sort of nervous buzzing in his stomach, this need for spontaneity. No, that’s wrong… He must have, some time, somewhere felt like there was an electrical storm brewing in the pit of his stomach. And where in the world did this rain come from! In Middleborough, it never rained. Rain was bad for your hair, it was gross, it was sad. 

And why did that image of the radio and the rain and someone who made him feel warm inside keep flashing through his mind?

“Hey, do you happen to have a match on you?” a voice called from behind. Jeremy spun around, startled, to see a guy leaning against the wall of the diner looking like something straight out of an anti-reefer video they’d watch in health class. Leather jacket, slicked back hair, cigarette in hand, the whole deal, all bathed in the warm, red, flickering glow from the sign just above them. 

He squinted his eyes behind his glasses. They lit up. “Wait, Jeremy? Is that you?”

“Yeah? Do, uh, do I know you?” Jeremy was at a loss for who this guy was, which was weird because he knew everyone in town. Everything about him just didn’t fit in Middleborough. Where Jeremy had white picket fences and soda pops and track practice, the boy standing across from him seemed the complete opposite. Like he had been cut out of a movie and pasted behind Dewey’s, just to completely derail Jeremy’s night.

The boy shook his head, sighed, and looked Jeremy up and down. “It did a real number on you.” Something hardened in his eyes and the tiny spark in his eyes before was gone. 

“What? What’s your name?” Jeremy’s curiosity was getting the best of him, Squip would probably tell him off if he knew, but it didn’t seem to matter right now. It was like the storm around them and the broken red sign would conceal them from the rest of the world. 

Jeremy took a few steps closer. It felt almost liberating.

After shaking his head and scoffing a few more times, the boy eventually met Jeremy’s eyes again. Somehow they seemed more alive than anything he’d ever seen from his friends. “Michael. Michael Mell.” 

“Well, nice to meet you, Michael.” Jeremy extended his hand. For some reason, even though all of Jeremy’s common sense was screaming that this guy was bad news, the sparks in his stomach were pulling him closer and closer towards Michael. 

“Yeah,” Michael said after a moment, then shook Jeremy’s outstretched hand. Michael, however, didn’t stop staring at Jeremy, almost like he was searching for something. 

“You know, I heard cigarettes are bad for you,” Jeremy said, out of lack of anything better to say. 

“Yeah, and so are super computers from Japan, but look where we are now.” 

“Why are you staring at me like that?” There was no bite behind Jeremy’s question. He was just genuinely curious. 

“You really don’t remember me?” Michael seemed somewhat hurt. 

“Um, no, sorry, I don’t. Should I?” Michael was too memorable to forget. He was sure.

Michael’s shoulders dropped and he looked at the ground, carefully inhaling and exhaling slowly. “Cool, great, wonderful…” he murmured. Jeremy watched and wondered if he should comfort him. For what, he was lost. 

“Um, do you-”

“I’m gonna go, I-” Michael looked back up at Jeremy and whatever he was going to say stayed firmly in his throat. Jeremy could see his eyes shining whenever the light hit them. He wondered what could ever make someone so sad, and was glad he never had to feel like that. Not again. 

For a second, it seemed like even the rain stopped as neither boy could pull their gaze from the other.    
  


Michael broke first, marching out of the shelter of the overhang and into the awaiting storm. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly to Jeremy as he passed.

He watched Michael go, trudging through the inky blackness and the puddles and rain. Back into the electric night. Jeremy looked back at the window where he could see his friends. They were laughing and smiling, a shiny beacon of perfection. Everyone wanted that, didn’t they?

“What are you sorry for?” Jeremy yelled to Michael.

Michael stopped in his tracks. The rain seemed to bounce off the shiny jacket. His carefully gelled hair was dismantling itself.

“I couldn’t save you. And now we’re trapped in some cheap republican nightmare.”

“Save me from what?” 

Michael looked up, shaking his head, looking like he was cursing every single star in the sky. He slowly turned around and faced Jeremy. 

“Why are you even talking to me? Don’t you wanna get back to your friends in there?” He twitched at the word friends, almost like he wanted to cringe away from the word itself. 

Jeremy shrugged. “They can wait. We do this every night. I was bored.”

Michael held a hand to the bridge of his nose. “That’s a pretty douchey thing to say, Jere.” 

“How do you know my name?” 

“Because we’re best friends.” Michael's eyes met his own with nothing but sincerity. 

Jeremy remembered a car, a person, the rain, and a radio. 

Jeremy did not remember ever meeting Michael. 

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never met you before.” Jeremy should be calling him a weirdo, stalker. Jeremy should turn around right now, go back inside, flirt with Christine, and do the same thing tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. Jeremy should be perfect. He had always been perfect, everyone said so. He should be scared that this stranger knew so much about him. But Jeremy was tired of doing what he should do. 

Jeremy remembered someone once telling him water shouldn’t mix with electricity. He doesn’t care. 

Jeremy took a step into the rain, and let it soak into his clothes, ruin his hair, everything he had never done. “Let’s take a walk.” 

Michael's eyes widened, and he gestured vaguely to the sky. Jeremy just smiled and walked past him. He followed. 

It took about a block for either boy to say anything, both lost in their own thoughts. 

“So, theoretical-best-friend, why have I never seen you around Middleborough?”

“Because this whole world was created by the Squip a few hours ago and he has us all in some weird alternate reality where everyone seems to have suddenly gotten amnesia.”

Jeremy barked out a laugh. “ _ What? _ ”

Michael just shrugged, looking intently forward. 

“So you’re saying my guidance counselor created a whole different world and that is why I don’t remember you.”

“Guidance counselor? What the fuck, this is so weird.”

“So you curse.” Jeremy nodded, accepting this is where the night has brought him. “My maybe-best friend is some rebel who likes to smoke, hang out outside of diners, and curse apparently. Cool.” 

“Don’t forget the weed.” Michael was smiling now. 

“Oh my god. I am walking around town with a delinquent! I swear, if someone sees me…” Jeremy couldn’t seem to find the energy to finish that sentence. 

“You’ll what, have to ignore me again?” Michael sounded hollow. 

Jeremy wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. So the pair continued down, walking in and out of hazy patches of light from the streetlights dotting the suburb streets, thoroughly soaked and silent. 

“Where are we even going.” Michael broke the silence this time. 

“Don’t know. Didn’t have a plan, so…” 

“So.” Michael quietly echoed.

They walked on, the awkward tension buzzing around the air like mosquitos, until Jeremy felt like he was about to be devoured by it. “Listen, I’m sorry that you think I don’t remember you or that I did something, but I don’t understand. I’ve lived in Middleborough my entire life, I’m sure of it.”

“And I’m sure you haven’t.” Michael stopped, and Jeremy followed. He sighed, before continuing, not meeting Jeremy’s eyes. “But you’re not gonna believe me. So that’s it. I don’t have to be your pity case, so just go back to your friends and forget I ever existed.” He was mumbling by the end. 

“Do you really want me to do that?”

“No.”

Jeremy looked at Michael, this boy who seemed so tough, now breaking down in front of his eyes in the middle of the rain. Soft oranges of the streetlights reflected off his shiny jacket, the gel completely gone from his hair, a few strands dangling limply in front of his face, dripping wet. Some tiny part of Jeremy couldn’t help but think he looked pathetic. A bigger part of him knew that he was more real than any of his friends had ever been. 

Jeremy took a deep breath, then continued to walk forward. “Okay, so how did we end up here then?”

Michael stared after him in disbelief. “It’s kind of a long story…” 

“Well I have about a ten minute walk home, think you can fit it in?”

Michael hesitated, looked back down the street where they came, then back to Jeremy. A small smile stretched across his face before he jogged up to Jeremy. “Okay, well first of all…”

  
  
  


Michael had told Jeremy about the future. About robots in people’s brains and school plays and sodas. Jeremy’s head was spinning by the end of it, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the story or Michael’s wild storytelling, complete with crazy hand motions and sound effects. 

“-and then all of the sudden I woke up here in a car, in some weird ass Grease get-up.”

“And then you saw me?”

“And then I saw you,” Michael finished with a nod. They were just a few more houses away from Jeremy’s.

“That’s… Wow.” Jeremy was speechless. He couldn’t believe what Michael had told him, right? It sounded like the ravings of a lunatic, none of it was real. Except Jeremy’s brain couldn’t help but snag on that  _ what if _ . 

“Yeah, crazy right?”

“Right.” Jeremy still sounded faint. 

“Woah, Jere, did I, like, snap your brain in half or something? Are you okay?” Michael put a hand on Jeremy’s elbow, concern quickly filling his voice. 

“No, I’m fine, I just…” Jeremy’s thoughts were racing too much, spiraling further and further. What if, what if, what if. 

“Here, uh, you should go inside and lie down.” Michael guided him onto his driveway and up onto his front porch. Jeremy didn’t even want to think about the fact that he knew which house was his. 

He shook his head, pulling himself together. His drenched clothes stuck to his skin. “Yeah, uh, thanks, Michael.” He took his arm back, feeling just a little guilty at the flash of hurt behind those glasses. “Goodnight.” He tried to pull off some casual smile or chill posture, but they both knew he was failing. 

“Goodnight, I guess.” Any energy Michael had built up on the walk was sapped, and he quickly turned around and started down the steps.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jeremy shouted back to Michael. 

He turned and shrugged. “Only if you want to.” An attempt at a smile that looked more like a grimace, and he was off, back down the street. Jeremy had no clue as to where. 

With a sigh, Jeremy turned the handle of his front door and stepped inside.

It was hard to explain that feeling where everything becomes just a little more clear. Like when your ears pop and you suddenly realize how bad you were hearing before, and how you never even noticed. Jeremy couldn’t help but feel like his world had shifted, somehow become just a tiny bit clearer, as he walked through his house and up to his room. 

“Hey, sport, your mother has some food left in the fridge!” his dad called to him, probably from the couch with a newspaper in front of his face, tie loosened and a drink in hand. 

“I ate already. Thanks, though!” Jeremy just wanted to fall into bed and forget any of this ever happened. Jeremy wanted to run back into the rain and find Michael and ask him more about Squips and video games and their forgotten life together. Jeremy just wanted his life to make sense again. 

Once he was in his bedroom, he peeled off the wet clothes he was wearing and changed into pajamas before throwing himself into bed. Jeremy stared at his ceiling, trying to sort out his thoughts. 

Jeremy thought about how tomorrow he was going to go to school and see his friends. Tomorrow, he was going to be Jeremy Heere again and go back to his life. He knew he couldn’t continue with the monotony though. He thought about how he never had an issue with it before. 

Jeremy also thought about Michael Mell. How he was going to get to the bottom of this. By all logic and reason, Michael was crazy. An absolutely bonkers weirdo who Jeremy should have no interaction with whatsoever. But Jeremy couldn’t forget the electric night, the boy who looked tough but would break down in the rain and talk with his hands and smoked cigarettes outside of busy diners. 

Jeremy thought about that car, and that person, the radio and the rain.

And Jeremy fell asleep thinking what if, what if, what if. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so.... quarantine is happening.  
Because I have so much free time I'm going to be working on this a lot more so... yay.
> 
> Special thanks to The_Writing_Dork for helping beta, motivating me to finish this chapter, and helping plan basically everything else that's gonna happen. 
> 
> Thanks for reading though, hope everyone is healthy and safe!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure if I'm going to continue this or not yet, but I thought of this idea like a year ago and finally decided to do something with it, so yeah! Hope you liked it, and thanks for reading!


End file.
